Saying this he left the apartment with a noiseless step. Rupert, though he felt the awkwardness of his own position, in being thus left in the sole guardianship of Nina, could not but acquiesce in the imperative necessity of his brother's departure; and taking a seat near the unconscious maiden, his attention was taken up with anxious wishes for her quick restoration, and with fears lest he should be discovered while upon his watch.

CHAPTER XIV.

It was reasonable that Count Arensberg should feel eager to obtain an audience as speedily as possible with his sovereign, the Elector Frederick. For, although he had not left Rome one moment before his mission was concluded, the circumstance that he might have committed himself, if not his official character, by aiding a subject of the Pope to evade his territories, was suggestive of very grave foreboding.

It was, therefore, with an oppressed heart that he repaired to Torga, where the Elector then held his court. Very soon after his arrival he was admitted to the prince.

Our readers will have been enabled, from the history of the times, to form an estimate of the character of this wise Elector; as also, to determine the position he was occupying amid the political and religious movements of the day. Heretofore we have not thought it necessary to state the special object on which he had sent an Envoy-extraordinary to the Papal

Court; it will now, however, be right to observe, that the Sovereign Pontiff had, by every available artifice, endeavoured to conciliate the Elector's confidence and obedience, with the immediate purpose of obtaining his surrender of Martin Luther's person to his own ecclesiastical jurisdiction. And the Elector's reason for expressly commissioning Count Arensberg to Rome, was, through the latter's diplomatic talents, to evade this requisition, and, at the same time, to give no umbrage.

The prince had authorized him to urge—and in his name-that, while his reverence and faith in the Holy See remained intact and was most profound, he would hope that the Pontiff would allow the accused Luther to answer for himself, and before a tribunal of his own country.

It will suffice to say, that the express design of Arensberg's mission was to gain time. For the Elector-still anxious both to preserve the appearance of an unsuspicious neutrality, and, above all, to protect the great Reformer-felt certain that only a few months could elapse before the entire question would be submitted to the young Emperor, and that in a place in which he could directly exert his power for the guardianship of Luther, should the trial go against him.

How Count Arensberg, on his arrival at Rome, found all his proposed plans useless, from the resolution of the Court to fulminate against Luther; and how, therefore, he found his sole business to consist in the

discharge of the mere formalities of his embassy, will be obvious to our readers.

Frederick the Wise was famed for a policy which, while it baffled all those who attempted to over-reach him, never committed his own honour-never so much as laid it open to suspicion. And the range in which he displayed this policy was that of foreign courts only, not that of his own almost domestic electorate. In the latter he was the open, guileless man, free both in the expressions of his face and in the words of his lips. There his benignity, his thoughtfulness, even his economy, all bore so immediately upon the welfare of his subjects, that, coupling with these features of his character, his enlarged love of literature, his munificence when necessary for its sake, and his broad-minded tolerance of opinion, all those subjects confided in him as well as loved him. He was like a parent, who, after having had through the whole day exerted every power of shrewdness and sagacity, in order to meet others in business who were striving to circumvent him, returns home at eventide, relaxes his brow of thought, throws down the reins he had held over his tougue, and smiles, and laughs, and frowns, without predetermination.

Count Arensberg knew all this, and under other circumstances it would have soothed much of his perplexity and foreboding. But he had to meet his prince upon matters that concerned the relations of the State to another and a mighty power; and the former part

of the Elector's character was that which, he felt sure, he would be called upon to satisfy.

"Welcome back home, my lord," said Frederick, in a tone of kindness, raising his eyes from a rough draft of paper, from which he was dictating to his secretary, Spalatin. "You have been well, and sped well, I trust, my lord. Eh?"

And the Elector's eyes fixed themselves upon those of Arensberg, as if to say, "We must interpret the answer by other things than words."

"Alas! may it please your Serene Highness, I fear me that I have gone on a bootless errand. Deign, gracious Sovereign, to impute my failure to no lack of energy or thoughtfulness. I had been anticipated, long before I could have possibly arrived at Rome.”

"Your papers, my Lord Arensberg, will, I hope and believe, save you from all self-reproach. None of us can command success. Only, before you give them, tell me how long you were on your journey after you left our Court; and also, when you started on your return from Rome."

"Your Highness, I was in the saddle on the very evening of my commission, and reached the holy city on the twenty-seventh morning afterwards, as the first of these my papers will authenticate."

"Then, in truth, good Arensberg, thou must have had hard riding," returned the prince, in a more gracious tone; and his adoption of the "thou" for the "you" was, in itself, a sign how his reserve was beginning to relax.